


To Play the Watchman

by Crowgirl



Series: Welcoming Silences [35]
Category: Foyle's War
Genre: Angst, Domestic, Established Relationship, Internal Conflict, M/M, Melancholy, Not Beta Read, Prompt Fill, Quintuple Drabble, Worry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-31
Updated: 2015-12-31
Packaged: 2018-05-10 13:13:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5586994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crowgirl/pseuds/Crowgirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the prompt: <i>The Snowman</i>/snowmen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Play the Watchman

Foyle steps out the back door to fetch firewood and stops on the doorstep. ‘What...on earth…’

Paul looks up from his occupation: smoothing the curve of a large snowball. ‘Mr. Foyle! Come to join us?’

‘Oh, yes, do!’ Sharon Dabney, daughter of the house directly across the garden wall, pops up from behind a massive half-snowman. Her cheeks are bright red, her woolly cap is over one ear, and she looks absolutely delighted.

‘What are you doing?’ Foyle makes his way to the woodpile and starts assembling his load. 

‘Well, the first one we made didn’t hold.’ Paul gestures to a pile of crumbled snow fragments behind the enormous second figure. ‘So we had to try again. Sharon, come build this up a little.’ 

Sharon darts across and starts slapping snow in place as Paul takes a couple long steps and stops Foyle at the back door. ‘I didn’t think you’d mind. She--’ Paul glances back at Sharon. ‘--you know her mother’s ill and I--’

‘Paul, it’s fine.’ Foyle shifts his armload of wood and touches Paul’s shoulder briefly. ‘Certainly half the snow in the garden is yours and I freely cede you my half.’

Paul smiles. ‘I’ll make up the scones when I come in. I won’t be long.’

‘Take your time.’ Foyle presses his shoulder a little more firmly and takes his wood inside, knocking the door shut with his elbow. 

He kneels down in the sitting room to feed the fire, buries one log in cinders and bright embers, and stares at it, trying to force the nagging thought at the back of his mind into focus. This is the third or fourth time that Paul has been Sharon’s company for an afternoon; Mrs. Dabney is dying slowly and her husband understandably distracted. Foyle can see exactly what draws Paul to Sharon and he likes the girl himself; she doesn’t have siblings and she’s a solitary child at the best of times. 

He isn’t jealous of Paul’s time, certainly, but -- There’s something about how Paul enjoys the time with Sharon, the readiness with which he falls in with her plans and then manages to make them a tiny bit different so she’s surprised by the outcome-- He hears a shout of laughter from outside and makes his way into the kitchen. 

From the window, he can see that the snowman is complete and adorned with Paul’s hat and scarf. Sharon is doubled over laughing as Paul regards the thing with a mixture of amusement and pride. 

As Foyle watches, almost laughing himself as Sharon reaches forward to poke pebble buttons into the snowman’s midsection, the thought snaps into focus and he feels something cold and heavy in his throat. Of course. Of _course_ \-- why hadn’t he realised it before? If _this_ \-- whatever this is that he and Paul have between them, if it continues then -- then Sharon Dabney may well be the closest Paul will ever get to having a child.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Shakespeare's [Sonnet 61.](http://www.bartleby.com/70/50061.html)


End file.
